The success of the Fox TV show “Glee,” not to mention a jillion YouTube videos, says hell to the no on that. The genre is rightfully defined by relentlessly chipper performances utterly lacking in irony, or any apparent knowledge of the campy undertones.

A drummer and drum teacher in Oklahoma City, Smooth is famous online for his amazing a capella renditions of classic video game themes. His videos aren’t just fun re-arrangements of classic game music — with songs from Sonic the Hedgehog, Castlevania, Street Fighter 2, Final Fantasy VII and Mega Man, to name a few — they’re also shockingly cinematic, with the screen split to feature recordings of Smooth singing every portion of the song, and video from the game in question in the center.

The effect is not only hypnotic, it also accomplishes the almost impossible task of making a capella music awesome, with Smooth sometimes singing more than a dozen tracks for a single song, all mixed together in the video. That’s a success more difficult to achieve than untyting the Gordian knot, and I had to know how he does it.

“I started off doing original songs, but one day I decided to arrange a Zelda song and record it using only my voice,” Smooth said in an email interview with Game Front. He also added that he never did much singing until he started recording. “I enjoyed the process so much,” he said, “that I kept doing it!”

Smooth’s process is fairly organic, which is another way of saying he just wings it. He said he generally listens to the original music track from the game repeatedly and picks out the various parts, recording each of them individually as he listens to them.

Finally, he goes back and re-records each track until they each sound how he wants them to sound — which is to say, he’s a perfectionist, and it shows. Take his cover of “Corridors of Time” from Chrono Trigger, embedded below. At various intervals, Smooth produces a rolling sound that, with some reverb, resembles the strumming of a full harp; listen to it with headphones, and the effect is more pronounced as the harp passes from ear to ear. Through techniques such as these, he manages the trick of making it sound like an original work.

How does he manage it? “Using a metronome helps immensely.”

An avid gamer and a passionate musician, Smooth said he’s always been interested in working with video games.

“Ever since I started playing games as a kid, I’ve felt a connection with video game music,” he said. “The era of video games that I grew up with had very powerful music, and I feel fortunate that other people enjoy listening to me do my versions of those songs. I’ve written my own songs inspired by my favorite video game composers as well.”

Smooth started his YouTube channel with random game songs that he liked, but said he now receives so many requests from his many subscribers that he tends to pick his favorites from among those. The upshot is that he intends to continue a capella video game arrangements until he runs out of good music, which he doesn’t see happening any time soon.

Meanwhile, Smooth’s online popularity has translated to offline success, at least in that it’s allowed him to spend more time on the creation of more songs and videos. “But,” he said, “I’ve also received several offers having to do with performances and other things along those lines. For now, I’ll continue to do what’s fun, which is why I started this in the first place!”

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/interview-with-smooth-mcgroove/feed/2The Legend of Zelda Reimagined with Zelda as the Leadhttp://www.gamefront.com/the-legend-of-zelda-reimagined-with-zelda-as-the-lead/
http://www.gamefront.com/the-legend-of-zelda-reimagined-with-zelda-as-the-lead/#commentsFri, 12 Apr 2013 00:10:09 +0000Ian Miles Cheonghttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=216798The creator of the webcomic Dresden Codak, Aaron Diaz, has put together a series of illustrations of something called “The Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Empire.” Inspired by Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women webseries, Diaz decided to construct a concept for a Zelda game where Zelda herself is the hero, rescuing Prince Link.

In the first episode of the Tropes vs. Women webseries, Sarkeesian approaches the topic of the “damsel in distress”, a well-worn trope that’s been a core component of video games for decades. The “damsel in distress” trope has served only to marginalize female characters as objects to be rescued by male protagonists. As a result of their trophy status, they often have little in the way of personality or characterization beyond needing rescue.

Diaz’s Zelda game concept is an attempt to elevate the series above its tired old tropes by giving Zelda a proper character of her own by making her the protagonist of the game after which she’s named. Beyond that, Diaz also designed his concept to fit into the continuity of the setting instead of taking the easy way out by simply redressing any existing Zelda game with her as the protagonist.

Clockwork Empire is set 2,000 years after the events of Twilight Princess, isn’t a reboot, and is simply another iteration of the franchise.

“It just so happens that in this case, Zelda is the protagonist. I’m a very big Zelda fan, and worked hard to draw from key elements in the continuity and mythos,” wrote Diaz.

“This concept work is meant to show that Zelda as a game protagonist can be both compelling and true to the franchise, while bringing new and dynamic game elements that go farther than being a simple gender swap.”

Beyond making Zelda the story’s heroine, Zelda is trained in the use of swords and makes up for her lack of a shield with her magic-wielding ability, which she uses to her advantage in combat. To amplify her powers, Zelda equips an ancient Hylian artifact called the Gauntlet of Gamelon.

The Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Empires is a worthy effort from one so talented as Aaron Diaz, and something that could very easily begin a trend of creative endeavors to recreate, or reimagine popular games like Zelda with their female characters in the lead.

Spike TV has created what some may argue is long overdue and some may feel is a dangerous move toward ossified irrelevance*, the Video Game Hall of Fame, and the first indctee is the, ahem, legendary Legend of Zelda franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto made a charming appearance to accept, and reminded me of why I was such a super Nintendo fanboy for so many years. Seriously, there’s just something kind of wonderfully wholesome about the culture of Nintendo, right? One thing he did not talk about was the rumor, since denied, that he would be stepping down. So don’t ask!

*I confess. I feel this way. BOOO Hall of fames! They turn living culture into museum fixtures! That’s bad! But if we have to have a hall of fame, then I support this selection if only because it’s a perfect depiction of how lackluster Miyamoto’s output has been in recent years. The man is a genius and undeniably one of the all-time most important figures in gaming, but he’s been essentially reiterating past successes for more than a decade.

This being the first ever inductee, we can’t say for certain, but it appears the VGHoF is going the Rock and Roll hall of fame route by requiring a 25 year span since original publication in order to qualify. If true, then there’s a lot of old, forgotten games that seriously deserve the recognition. Let us know in comments what you’d like to see, or if you’d even like to see any.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/vgas-2011-zelda-franchise-first-ever-inductee-into-the-video-game-hall-of-fame/feed/2Manual Labor: Why We Don’t Need Game Manuals Anymorehttp://www.gamefront.com/manual-labor-why-we-dont-need-game-manuals-anymore/
http://www.gamefront.com/manual-labor-why-we-dont-need-game-manuals-anymore/#commentsMon, 17 Oct 2011 13:56:32 +0000Jim Sterlinghttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=131191(This is another edition of </RANT>, a weekly opinion piece column on GameFront. Check back every week for more. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect those of GameFront.)

Once upon a time, a videogame manual was a treasured item. As well as containing tutorials on game mechanics and controller layouts, it was a place to read extra narrative material and gawp at some gorgeous artwork. These lavish productions are undoubtedly a thing of the past now, and the Internet isn’t short of gamers expressing their unhappiness at the fact. Due to packaging costs or manufacturers not being bothered anymore, detailed videogame manuals are practically extinct and it’s not uncommon a new game’s manual to be little more than a slapdash pamphlet, containing only the most basic of controller information. F.E.A.R. 3′s manual, for instance, was two pieces of glossy paper stapled together. More effort went into the paper advertisements and online pass that had been tossed in there than the actual game booklet.

I’ve made fun of this practice, and many people have complained about it, but the more I think about it the more I wonder why it matters at all. I only recently realized that I haven’t relied on a manual to teach me anything about a game in years. This is a good thing too, as was hammered home by my recently having to play Namco Bandai’s tepid collection of Wii minigames, Go Vacation, for a review. In this game, there are all manner of waggle-based activities, and each one is preceded by a tutorial screen that shows me what to do. I realized just how much I hate having to look at a lifeless screen of information, and just how little of the content sunk into my head. Now granted, Go Resort is about as complicated as a three-year-old’s drawing of Kirby, but even so I came to appreciate real in-game tutorials that teach you controls while you play, not before or after.

How many times have you started a game demo, only to be assaulted by that controller layout screen? The one with diagrams everywhere telling you which buttons do what. How many of you feel overwhelmed by that screen and click away without even trying to learn from it, confident instead that you’ll pick it up more easily by playing it? I know I do that with every demo I play.

We learn best through experience. You can tell anybody how to ride a bike, but they won’t actually learn anything until they saddle up and try it for themselves. This is how I learned to rollerblade (seriously, fatty can blade). I stuck a pair on and used them to skate up a hill. That may sound incredibly stupid, but I was playing Ariel the Robot in a school production of Return to the Forbidden Planet and needed to learn very fast. So I decided to go through a very painful crash course where I walked up a hill wearing roller blades and then — terrified — skated down it. I fell, I bruised, I had the worst time of my life, but it didn’t take very long before I could blade pretty damn decently. Ever since then, I’ve been of the mind that just doing stuff is the best way to learn anything. I don’t like being told stuff, I like doing stuff.

Videogames learned the truth of this a long time ago, as in-game tutorials became more and more common. Nowadays, they’re practically obligatory, with some games constantly showing the button commands on-screen beyond the tutorial stages. Learning how a game works while one plays is the best way to learn, far better than reading it in a book first and then jumping in. In-game tutorials encode the commands into our muscle memory, and allow us to pick things up at a solid pace. If the purpose of a manual is to teach us how to play a game, then most manuals are obsolete already. They seem to exist as little more than vestigial concessions to a human brain that craves tradition.

Fact is, we don’t need manuals anymore, and their existence is a waste of paper. I’ve seen so many complaints about the “death” of game manuals and I have to wonder how many of the complainers actually care about them. How many gamers have ever relied on a manual to help them, and how many times has a small book truly impacted the experience of the videogame itself? Not many, I’d wager, on all counts.

I do empathize, though. There’s something that feels “cheap” about opening a game box and seeing a paper-thin manual inside, or finding one completely missing. I still feel that way emotionally, but intellectually I understand it’s a ludicrous attitude and probably a mental habit that needs to be broken. We want these things just for the sake of having them, not because we truly find them useful or interesting. Even with retro games, I can’t think of a huge deal of games where the manual was all that spectacular. Yes, some developers really pushed the boat out and provided a lavish production, but it’s never been the norm, because a manual really isn’t that crucial — the videogame is what matters, and with games themselves able to far better teach a player about a game, we don’t need to waste the paper.

As for the narrative backstory, most of that is provided in-game too these days. Back when videogames struggled to display more than two colors, we needed manuals to tell us who the hell everybody was, where they were, and why they’re fighting. Without a manual, The Legend of Zelda is about some gnome who’s given a sword by a creepy old man for no reason. In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, we don’t need a book to tell us about Link’s upbringing, his village, the world he inhabits, and the evil forces that need conquering. Games themselves can do all that now.

Even the artwork doesn’t require a paper sponsor anymore. So many special editions of games pack in art books, and many of the games themselves include concept art as unlockable bonuses. Once more I ask, is having a special doodle of Marcus Fenix on a sheet of paper no bigger than an envelope really that important to you? Were you going to frame it? How many times would you look at it a day? Do you really care about the manual being so thin, or are you just trying to find evidence that games were so much better back in the good old days and you’ll take any evidence you’ll find, no matter how contrived?

When you really stop and consider what we’re lamenting the death of, it seems so foolish. Crying over the death of something that died because it got replaced by something far more useful to us as gamers — the videogames themselves. That’s what happened. Videogames killed the game manual by technologically advancing to the point where they can do everything manuals used to do to a far better degree. Really, who needs them anymore? Only those of us clinging to tradition, sad to see a piece of history go away despite the fact that it’s just that — history.

Are you a sucker? Or perhaps a very wealthy person who has tons of expendable cash lying around and simply burning it in front of the poor people in your neighborhood has lost its allure? Are you obsessed with a Zelda game that was awkwardly ported from GameCube to Wii? If so, then have I got a deal for you! First 4 Figures, makers of officially licensed collectable figurines, have created the remarkable statue of Link and Epona that you see above. Inspired by Twilight Princess, the piece is 16 inches tall and 16 inches across and is hand-painted on synthetic stone. It also costs $424.99. That’s four hundred and twenty four DOLLARS.

If seeing this taking up space on your mantle would bring your living room to perfection, then you’d best get cracking – they’re only making 1500 of them. Why, it’s just the thing to show the squares you’re forced to rub elbows with at the yearly billionaire conference in Davos that, despite your obscene wealth, you haven’t forgotten how to have a good time. Plus, it might give your servants a glimpse at the culture of gaming they couldn’t otherwise afford on the salary you’re paying them.

Yes, yes, this is a beautifully rendered collectible. But come on, seriously. It’s 425.00 and you can’t even use it to play a Zelda game. I got a PS3 AND and Xbox 360 with that kind of money, so I guarantee you’ll have more fun at my house.

Ever try to parse the timeline of what the hell happens in Hyrule? I mean, there are about 90 games with “The Legend of Zelda” in the title. They’re mostly all set in the same place (Hyrule) and they all concern a guy called Link, a lady called Zelda and a pig-man called Ganon. And that just doesn’t make sense.

Fortunately, if there’s one guy who can help make sense of a convoluted timeline, it’s Dr. Emmett Brown. Scroll on down to see a fan-made movie in which Brown heads to Hyrule in the time-traveling DeLorean to put Link on the right time-traveling path.

Our buddies at Break Media sister site Tu Vez picked up on this very cool musical tribute to The Legend of Zelda for its 25th anniversary — a full-fledged cumbia rendition of the iconic Zelda theme. Much obliged, Internet.

Okay, I like games as much as just about anybody and I’m not denying that the video game culture can and has shaped the lives of many, many people just like me. And I also understand the primal need to brand yourself permanently with something you enjoy as a means of propping yourself up as a “unique” and storied individual. Using someone else’s intellectual property to define yourself is very important in the world today.

But if you’re going to slap somebody’s cartoon on your body forever, it’s not something you should rush into. You certainly shouldn’t let your in-training tattoo artist cousin ink you with his first attempt at a rough sketch of Kratos eviscerating Master Chief so you can prove your undying love to the Sony gods. Spend some money. Shop around. Make sure the person drawing your video game tattoo has a firm understanding of just how important Shy Guys were to your development as a human being.

You also might want to hit the gym some beforehand. Just saying.

By way of example of what not to do, we present the following: 10 ill-advised tattoos, for various reasons. Hopefully this will cause you kids to think twice before you take the dope and run off to your nearest Target and start jabbing yourselves with Sharpies.

10. Clown Samus

Here’s an interesting choice — rather than opting for the more technically interesting and proportionally correct Samus Aran of later Metroid iterations, this tattoo sides with the little-remembered NES “Cotton Candy Gun” version of the space bounty hunter.

I appreciate this depiction of my favorite Nintendo hero, as she is so proficient in dispensing cotton candy to hungry, excited children, she doesn’t even have to look in the direction that she’s aiming. I can get behind Clown Samus, using her years of training in space bounty hunting to bring joy to children at your local county fair. She’s a hero, but she also gives back to her community.

9. Respect your art school training

Remember when we were talking about making sure the guy who is drawing a picture on your body with a stabby implement actually has the ability to draw the things you want him to? This is why — because if you don’t, you could end up with a pile of cartoons on your arm that look like they’re recovering from facial reconstructive surgery.

If you’re nerdy enough to get Mega Man, Mario and Link seared into your flesh (okay, you’re right, tattooing isn’t really a “searing” kind of action, but I’m quickly running out of synonyms for “branded like so much livestock”), you’re nerdy enough to care about accuracy in your imagery. I can’t get past the fact that Mega Man has a bulbous muffler attached to his arm, Link has some kind of spinal deformity, and Mario is less like a heroic monster-stomping plumber and more like a guy whose overarching ambition is to bags groceries for a living.

Although that might also describe the guy who willingly paid for this tattoo.

8. There’s a duck in your pants…?

I’m not really sure I get this one. Maybe it’s the convex nature of the imagery slapped on this dude’s firm and swelling gut. Is he trying to depict that he’s packing digital heat and that he could draw those Zappers and sling some hot light in the direction of any stray laughing dogs?

I dunno. I’m not really sure why you’d want the NES light gun flanking your real-life love gun anyway. Seems like it draws unwelcome comparisons in the follow-up to a date: “Want to have sex?” “You know, I really have a craving to play Wild Gunman — do you have that?”

And with that gut, it’s not like you can pull it back with some kind of sexy dance or something. So you just got c-blocked by a toy from 1985. Way to plan ahead.

7. A chest-wide montage of awkwardness

There’s such a thing as overkill. Any tattoo containing Q*Bert qualifies for this category.

For the most part, I think this one speaks for itself. However, allow me to point out the tasteful wrap-around of the nipples by the artist, preserving those tiny lions’ manes of cultivated, whispy nip-hair from discomfort, and yet still allowing their owner to display them proudly alongside those long, exceptionally muscular Q*Bert legs.

6. Lamest possible conclusion

There’s only one thing worse than a badly drawn tattoo — and that’s thinking you can improve on a badly drawn tattoo with a “brilliant” idea. Like Master Chief popping off his helmet at the end of a hard-fought, galaxy saving alien war to reveal that he’s actually a kid-friendly platforming fat guy.

This is a classic example of why you should make sure you can pay for the tattoo you really want. Mario Chief here smacks of a last minute decision to combine two marginal tattoos into one really, really terrible one. Next time you’re impulsively about to ask some artist to make you a piece of advertising for some company’s flagship cash-cow, ask your friends for a couple of bucks. You’ll only have your whole life to pay it back.

5. Even your tattoo thinks you might be a rapist

Sorry, guy. You chose poorly with this one. Points awarded for the creativity of trying to create a fighter jet cheesecake pinup out of a cartoon video game character. Points deducted by going to someone who drew her with the shoulders and build of a man and the frightened expression of a woman walking to her car in the dark, in a horror movie in which no one’s been murdered for a while.

Look, people judge you by your tattoos. Some do it professionally, in print, on the Internet. This is not one that’s going to score you any points, particularly with the ladies. A tattoo like this says several things:

I take Mario far too seriously, and probably have creepy Mario porn fanfics on my computer at home. Which I wrote.

I have little, if any, understanding of women. Also I’m openly attracted to cartoons.

4. Maybe you could pretend it’s a birthmark…

Or a deformity.

Although I guess if you’re going to get an instantly dated pop culture tattoo, you could do worse than Pac-Man. Around the time your skin starts to sag, making the tattoo unrecognizable, most everyone will probably have forgotten about Pac-Man anyway. Which means you can say the tattoo is anything — a symbol of your lost islander tribe’s ancient heritage of eating and battling ghosts, perhaps. Or a depiction of your respect for dead elders. Maybe a visual display of your womanhood being pursued by the spectre of male-dominated patriarchy and the cherry of equality and freedom, within reach but still requiring work to achieve.

Conversely, you could save yourself the effort and just grow your hair out. That sort of brand loyalty might fly over at Namco, but if you expect to ever be allowed the responsibility of working the drive-thru window, you’re going to need to cover up the 8-bit section of your face.

3. Adding potential for racism to beloved characters

I haven’t really got anything funny to say about this — at this point I’m just trying to process the information flooding my visual cortex without suffering an aneurysm.

Side note: I always got the impression that Crash Bandicoot was…I dunno, Australian? Anyway, were there mad scientists on the side of the North during the Civil War, or is he just endorsing racism? Can fictional pixelated animals be racist? Where does someone get a hold of a pair of those kick-ass glasses? How much regret at seeing that emblazoned on his skin every morning has accrued in this guy over the last 1,141 days since that picture was taken?

2. A meditation on Kratos in Silly Putty

It’s hard to make fun of this guy because it’s very possible he doesn’t really have much idea of the holocaust of dignity that takes place on his back every single second of every single day.

I mean, sorry to tell you this, dude, but this looks like you stretched Kratos’ face out and then stapled it to a soft round hunk of cheese. I think you were going for “menacing” or “scary,” but that one eye kind of looking off in a funny direction conjures up “kicked by a mule” or “fell down some stairs” more than anything.

Man, it just looks like a big cow with a scar, doesn’t it?

1. Everything awesome in a single tattoo

The quintessential tattoo. If ever a guy had thought of the single greatest tattoo ever, this is that guy, and he has that tattoo.

You learn everything you need to know about this guy within nanoseconds of seeing his iconography. He may as well have slapped “Steve, incredible badass” across his forehead — the message is the same, only this is so much cooler. Its purification and distillation of Steve’s essence is probably why he snapped this bathroom mirror Myspace profile pic of it. This is all you need to know about him.

I’ve really got to hand it to this guy for finding a way to combine such totally unrelated elements in a way that speaks to the overall awesome of all of them. Let’s break it down so we can see how Steve (that’s the hypothetical name I gave him) achieved such permanent, unremoveable, lifelong greatness.

He started with Jesus. He gave credit where credit was due.

But anybody can have a cross tattoo so he stepped it up with the marijuana leaf, signalling that cannabis, too, is important in everyday life and spiritual and personal health.

And then he threw in Bowser, the greatest villain of anything ever. Forget classical asskickers like Dracula or the Borg or zombies — Steve knew that a giant Princess-kidnapping Turtle-Dragon embodies the struggles of the human condition for enlightenment against the ever-present oppression of mediocrity, laziness and fiery cruelty. The sunglasses, of course, represent the blindness inherent in the search for true love.

And he gave him a guitar! And not just any guitar, but a double guitar, as Bowser’s fire-breathing plumber-fighting prowess is surpassed only by his musical ability. It also is meant to signify that physical limitations like having only three fingers to play an instrument with 12 strings cannot hold back Steve’s indomitable will.

Finally, Bowser is on a surfboard — the balance between the spiritual and the physical is achieved, but Steve knows that balance is precarious and he must maintain vigilance, lest he topple bodily into the raging surf of self-destruction. It can be spooky, but he and Bowser always have that marijuana leaf if they need to mellow out a bit.

UPDATE: I wrote this in the comments the other day, but apparently no one has noticed.

It has come to my attention that the No. 1 tattoo likely was inspired by this sketch from the Whitest Kids You Know.

However, I like my hypothetical description of Steve, incredible badass, and his amazing tattoo a little better. So just pretend like it still applies. In addition, some guy still got this terrible tattoo, referencing an inside joke from a somewhat-obscure sketch comedy troupe, and now it’s embedded in his skin forever. Pretty sure that falls into the category of “ill-advised.”

Zeldathon 2010, a charity event put on by a team of Legend of Zelda players annually for the last two years, started July 5. Already it has received about 30 percent of its goal of raising $1,000 for the National Children’s Advocacy Center. Donations can be made right on the Zeldathon site (more details after the jump).
The event spans 72 hours of pure Zelda and covers all seven console games, plus at least some of the handhelds. And the team is webcasting the entire marathon. They burned through The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link in the first day. That’s quite a feat, considering those games took 10-year-old me months and a couple of broken-in-frustration NES controllers to get through.

No word as to whether costs incurred from broken equipment while battling Shadow Link come out of the proceeds.